Why is it that celebrities are able to muster more creative energy than they've had in years to consistently utter their unforgettable last words?
Take, for example, the curious case of Dylan Thomas, poet, raconteur, and mainly raconteur who drank himself to death via shots of whiskey at New York City's White Horse Tavern before staggering back to the Chelsea Hotel, more than a dozen blocks later, and collapsing in its now-famous lobby. His immortal last words?
"Eighteen whiskeys... that must be some sort of a record."
Of course, the reason that all these famous last words are so, well, famous is that they are exaggerated and that the circumstances surrounding them are mostly unsubstantiated myths.
Here's what really happened to Dylan Thomas... according to Wikipedia, of course:
Thomas.. said that we was feeling awful and asked to take a "rain-check". He did however accompany Liz to the White Horse for a few beers. Feeling sick he again returned to the hotel.
[Dr.] Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, on the third call prescribing morphine. This seriously affected Dylan's breathing. At midnight on November 4/5, his breathing became more difficult and his face turned blue.
By 1:58 am Thomas had been admitted to the emergency ward at nearby St Vincent’s, by which time he was profoundly comatose. The doctors on duty found bronchitis in all parts of his bronchial tree, both left and right sides. An X-ray showed pneumonia... and Thomas died on November 9.
Here's where the myths started:
During an incident on 3 November 1953, Thomas returned to the Chelsea Hotel in New York, from the White Horse Tavern and exclaimed, "I've had eighteen straight whiskies, I think that is a record." However, the barman and the owner of the pub who served Thomas at the time, later told Ruthven Todd, that Thomas couldn't have imbibed more than half that amount, after Todd decided to find out.
Despite shattering that myth, here's a set of famous last words that have stood the test of time. If we're half this witty when the time comes, we must've done something right in life:
Friends applaud, the comedy is finished.
-Beethoven, died in 1827
I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.
-Bogart, 1957
Don't let it end like this. Tell them I said something.
-Pancho Villa, 1923
I know you have come to kill me. Shoot, coward. You are only going to kill a man.
-Ernesto "Che" Guevara, 1967
How were the receipts today at Madison Square Garden?
-P.T. Barnum, 1891
Codeine . . . bourbon.
-Tallulah Bankhead, 1968
Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.
-Oscar Wilde, 1900
But our favorite famous last words are those of former US President John Adams, who died on July 4, 1826. His bitter rivalry with Thomas Jefferson (the POTUS #3 to his POTUS #2) continued to his dying day, upon which Adams muttered, "And Thomas Jefferson still survives." As it turns out, Jefferson had actually died earlier that day, but Adams did not learn this before passing on.
Jefferson's last words? "Is it the Fourth?"
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